Changes in the laws relating to the telecommunications industry have required certain telephone companies to provide shared access to common telecommunications resources. Often, a single company manages these common telecommunications resources. As a result, this single company provides access to operational support systems to various competitors, customers, consumers, and vendors. However, the current operational support systems are often single-purpose, inflexible systems that are costly to maintain or enhance. In addition, many companies have multiple telecommunications resources supported by many different single-purpose systems for differing regions. Sharing these resources is complicated by the need to support multiple access protocols and diverse resource support systems. In one example, regional laws require that competitive local exchange carriers (CLEC) be given access to operational support systems managed by incumbent local exchange carriers (ILEC) to provide billing, fulfillment, and assurance support.
Sharing resources is further complicated by mergers and acquisitions of local exchange carriers. With a merger or acquisition, the surviving local exchange carrier faces the problem of supporting multiple diverse legacy systems performing similar functions, or investing considerable capital to replace or standardize the various operational support systems.
As such, many problems exist in providing access to operational support systems. Accordingly, there is a need for improved computer systems for telecommunications operational support.